‘Jordan Speaks Up’ prompts debate on abuse of women
When Rama Hamad uploaded her documentary, Jordan Speaks Up, to YouTube last Friday, she had no idea of the reaction it would inspire.
“It was overwhelming hearing all these stories,” Ms Hamad, 17, a high-school pupil in Amman, told The National. “I knew it would shock people due to the taboo surrounding the topic, but I didn’t know it would have this much impact.”
The 20-minute documentary, in which high-school pupils read anonymously-submitted stories of women’s experiences of sexual abuse and harassment in Jordan, created a space for others to share their stories under the hashtag #JordanSpeaksUp.
There were 4,000 tweets under the hashtag, posted by men and women, describing sexual abuse of all forms at the hands of family members, taxi drivers and even police.
One young woman expressed her frustration after sharing her story of harassment: “What makes the whole situation harder for me is that I can never talk about this topic with my family because it will result in them forbidding me to go out alone, to protect me.”
Fatima Al Masri, 26, a resident of Amman,said the campaign was absolutely necessary, because Jordan is “a very traditional community that shames women into believing that harassment is their responsibility, which leads to women’s fear of speaking up”.
This silence is what Ms Hamad sought to break with her film. “Staying silent allows this to go on. It evoked such anger in me knowing that [victims] were feeling such shame and fear, living in turmoil while the harassers lived on without feeling any accountability,” she said.
“In this documentary I wasn’t just targeting the harassers. I also did it for the victims, to allow them to express themselves,” Ms Hamad said.
But not all reactions were positive. A backlash quickly followed, with men calling those who participated in the campaign liars, and others saying that they were “tarnishing the country’s reputation”.
A comment under an article posted by the Jordanian publication, Khaberni, said that “these girls are dumb, they are naked in the streets, of course a guy would [catcall] them; if their clothes were appropriate, we would stop the harassment”.
Unwanted sexual contact is criminalised in Jordan under the penal code; but verbal harassment is loosely defined as “indecent words” and is punishable when directed at men only if the man is under 15 years old.
A 2018 UN report gives Jordan’s anti-harassment laws a low grade, because “the scope of the law is unclear and online harassment is not addressed”.
Another survey in the same year by the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development in Amman describes a “culture of silence” around sexual harassment in Jordan. It found that 75 per cent of Jordanian women who experienced sexual harassment in the workplace had not considered taking legal action, owing to a lack of knowledge or fear of losing their job.
Still, young Jordanians are not discouraged by the backlash and legal ambiguity. Omar Fathallah, 17, who edited the Jordan Speaks Up documentary, said he expected them. “If you open up Facebook right now, you’d see hundreds of people, mostly men, denying it. But I always believe the truth comes out, and it is coming out,” he told The National.